


Running Through a Red Light

by theclockiscomplete



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: As you do, Other, and projecting onto fictional characters, cleaning out my WIPs, implied - Freeform, t just in case but it's all implication, vague eroticism from weird stimuli, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 09:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20225665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclockiscomplete/pseuds/theclockiscomplete
Summary: The Doctor's face is slightly rearranged on accident. They kind of like it. Clara kind of likes that they like it. In this pretzel of liking the other liking things, there is perhaps one entire emotion, which neither of them will touch with a stick. But that's alright.





	Running Through a Red Light

**Author's Note:**

> Cleaning out my WIP folder. I know I intended to take this further but honestly? Looks p good the way it is, as short fics go.

“So how long’s that going to take to regrow?” Clara peered at the hole between the Doctor’s canine and front teeth, on tiptoe with a hand tugging their jaw down to look at her.

“Hggnh,” they said helpfully. 

Clara let go and stepped back, wiping Time Lord spit and a little bit of whatever the creature on their face had been on her dress. The Doctor made a face, ran an experimental tongue over their remodeled and slightly bloody teeth. 

“Few days, probably,” they said. Then, offhandedly, “should probably put that dress in the wash before we land.”

Clara glanced down, back up at them. “What, do creepy brain worm guts burn holes in blended fabrics or something? Because I feel like that is a possibility you should have mentioned before this moment.” 

“Clara there are entire galaxies out there that would ravage a star system for a cell of Time Lord DNA.” She realized she could see the new hole when they talked. It was distracting. “On its own, Haxxi blood is usually undetectable. But add a potent substance, like Time Lord fluids, and it becomes nearly impossible not to notice.”

Clara wrinkled her nose. “Okay, I am banning you from ever again using the phrase ‘Time Lord fluids.’ And what’s to stop anyone from smelling it on you?”

They waved a hand. “I’m already impossible to ignore,” they said. “I’d rather only have to be responsible for protecting one of us, given the choice.”

“Right,” she said slowly. Their eyes cut to her as she scrutinized their face, matched the hole she'd accidentally punched in their teeth with what she knew of them. It fit, in that lopsisded, step-to-the-left of punk way, but having been the one to knock it out, she wasn’t sure that was a judgment for her to make. “Sorry,” she said finally.

They touched their already-de-swelling jaw. “Not sure I am,” they said quietly. She might have thought they were referring to having saved them from a brain-eating worm in exchange for a tooth but for the look on their face-- one that she’d been seeing more and more often. That particular inability to look directly at her lest they spoil whatever was going on...

Oh.

They glanced down at her then, watching her process this information and waiting for her conclusion. “Is this a Thing?” she asked, stepping in close. She had to be straightforward with these kinds of situations, with them. No such thing as too obvious.

They glanced away. “I’d rather keep my teeth if it’s all the same to you,” they said. “But the bit with the…" they made a painfully awkward jab at the air six inches from her nose, dropped their hands again. "You don’t have to wait until there’s an imminent threat. For that.” After a moment of silence, Clara reached up and took their jaw in her hand. Her thumb pressed against the reddish part of their lip that would have been starting to bruise if they were a little more human. She didn’t move it. They didn’t ask her to.

  
But they were definitely asking  _ something _ with that look. She felt a thrill shudder from her gut to the palm of the hand holding their face. “Okay,” she said. She let them go, patted the spot once, hand trailing down their neck to the collar of their coat, then to their elbow. “Okay.”


End file.
